BENGALURU: Good morning, Bangalore!
The days and hours pass in a blur, especially when one is gainfully occupied. Of course, the adverb ‘gainfully’ has different connotations to different people. Does the usage of this adverb mean, earning one’s bread and butter? Or does it mean shopping, darling little lunches, hour-long gossip sessions over the phone, sweating it out in the gym or over a hot stove (take your pick, as both these activities are equally abhorrent to me!).
Does my speaking like a cotton-tailed bunny rabbit (read: air-headed excuse of a human being) upset you, my readers? Well, it’s meant to! It has become a national pastime to expound in totally nonsensical ‘fluffy’ conversations and conduct lectures filled with… how do I put it politely? Pure undiluted drivel! God men, life gurus and so called experts on anything (even the art of opening a brown paper bag) run amuck in our city. Read any paper, pamphlet or ad on the internet.
These people have spread their tentacles everywhere! And, if you ignore that, then they come in the guise of acquaintances and party conversationalists. Help!In a group chatter, a couple of us, (fluff-tailed bunnies and otherwise) were having a heated debate about the state of our beloved city. There was a good mix of the usual suspects. ‘Doomsday doyens’ and ‘lackadaisical laid backs’, who tried to outshout each other with a vengeance.
Thankfully, a few sane voices made a good point by saying that our city lacks a sense of ‘belonging’ as no one is invested in it. Bangalore, like Mumbai, has always had a separate cultural and ethnic identity from the state that it geographically belonged to. However, unlike Bangalore, Mumbai has a strong sense of community. It is a city that always bounces back because of the people, ‘the Mumbaikars’ as they call themselves.
There are tales of heroism and selflessness that abound in the city of immigrants. They are emotionally ‘invested’ in their city. Is the ‘Bangalorean’ invested like that, was the question?Except for a handful, do we raise our voices in unison at the pathetic state we find ourselves in? Do we get off our respective derrieres to do anything? Sadly, we all know the answers. Even our leaders are apathetic because, even they are the proverbial ‘outsiders’ to this city.
We all have our pet peeves. Being a performing artiste myself, I rue the lack of encouragement and funds allocated to art and music, drama and the revival of local art forms. That is probably why, as citizens, we make a beeline for anything that vaguely resembles an ‘artistic’ event! Even I did!The Ritz Carlton invited a small group of literature aficionados to hear the gorgeous Lisa Ray talk about her book, Close to the Bone, as a part of their monthly lecture series where they invite writers and thinkers to participate in inspiring public interactions.
Lisa Ray, the self-confessed ‘infant terrible’ of the 1990s, is a distracting gorgeous model and actor. And boy! Was she a hidden revelation of sorts! She was succinct, articulate and witty, with a great talent for a turn of phrase! As a friend, Ila Naidu remarked, ‘’Never judge a book by its cover, that’s for sure’’! A cancer survivor, she never made much of it. Her book is a candid look at her life and life-changing experiences.
When asked what was the worst time of her life, she sidestepped her battle with cancer and simply remarked, “The death of my mother.’’ During the interaction, she emphasised that being ‘broken’ was just fine. When she linked ‘being broken’ to the centuries-old Japanese art form Kintsukuroi, of repairing broken crockery by adding gold, she had me enthralled! Lisa Ray, beautiful, both inside and out!
Till next week. Ciao!